"Medea" Work in Progress

I seem to have forgotten that I have a blog.  Thought I would update you all with a little work in progress I am currently working on.  It is only 12x12 inches so a fairly quick work for me.  It is Medea, the villain witch of Euripides' play.  I do love those enchantresses with a bad rep.

Here is the beginning sketch done in graphite on a Ampersand artist panel.

I plan for there to be roses and a moth surrounding her.  I think the moth will be there to symbolize death and transformation.

After I have the sketch drawn I have to seal it.  For this work I used clear gesso.  After it dried it gave the work a really nice surface that the paint and I both really loved.

The next step is deciding on an underpainting color.  Doing soft pastels for many years I discovered I really hate to start with a white surface.  Pastel paper is often toned to a color that helps to build up skin tones in the work.  I try to paint the work a color that will help me build the skin tone I am shooting for.  Lately I have been using a lot of crimson red tones to start with.  For this one I want her skin pale, almost frosty.  I decided to start with a sea green color.

You can barely see it in the pic, but it is a nice greyish sea green.  I remember reading an artist once saying that there is a lot of grey in human skin color, but our eyes just don't really register it.  Putting little hints of grey in there can help you achieve a more realistic skin tone.

Next I play with some drips and background fun.  I decide to go with two of my favorite colors here, sea green/or turquoise and yellow ochre.  Which will both look great with the red roses I add later.

Now to go at that skin tone.  I never have a set formula for skin tone.  I usually use some combo of white, yellow ochre, unbleached titanium white, some kind of pinky orange.  I basically just start slapping colors down and slowly add more or less of one or the other depending on what I want to achieve.  This happens in many layers.  Here is the first one:

She is a little too pink at this stage, but I like the transculent feel, which is what I am going for.  I am really liking the sea green shadow areas too.  Still need to work on her nose and mouth....not quite right.

This one was a bad pic...but I am laying on more skin tone, getting it closer to where I want.  I also have her nose looking better.  I started adding the roses also.

This last pic is where she is right now.  I am going to go to town on that moth and the roses now, but I am pretty happy with her face at this point, just needs a little cleaning up....and the hair needs detailed.  Should be done with her soon though.  Hope you like her.

Collaboration with Stephanie Allison

Stephanie Allison and I have decided to do a fun little collaboration.  We each are going to paint half a canvas and then mail it to the other one to finish the other half.  I started on an 11x14 canvas panel and thought I would give you all a step by step look at how it evolves.  After I send it off to Stephanie she is going to do the same at her blog, so be sure to follow the whole progression over there.
I often post a few wips of my work over on my Facebook page, but rarely do I remember to take photos at every step.  Since this one was a small quick piece I tried to stop myself and take some photos.  I wanted to especially show you how much I often struggle to get the perfect skin tone and hair color on my girls.  Unfortunately with me, it is often just guesss work and not really an exact science.  So here we go:

The beginning sketch above.  With a quick wash of ultramarine blue below (after I sprayed it with a light layer of workable fixative).

When I first start adding skin tones they can look a mess for awhile.  Adding fixative over the canvas makes the first layers of paint not stick so well too.  I have to lay down a lot of thin layers early on and let them each dry.  At first they can look a mess for awhile, but I try my best to add the shadows and dark areas first.

Below I am adding in the darks of her hair.  I am trying to figure out where to go with her skin tone.  She is a little too pink and pasty at this point.

I think I want to go blonde, but it does not look good with her skin tone.

So I added some orangey tones to her skin and decided to go dark with the hair.  Had to add a mask too.

Getting close to done now.  Just got to add the peacock details.

And here is she is all done...well at least my side.  I kind of hogged a little more than half, I hope Stephanie doesn't get annoyed with me!

Mary, Queen of Sorrows

I decided to do a Mother Mary recently mainly because of the influence of my new friend and amazing artist Russelle Marcato Westbrook.  She is doing a whole series of exploring Mary and the opposites of dark and light within us all.
In the Bible, Mary was still a teenager when she was called upon to bear the Son of Man.  She became a mother in innocence, and lost her son in the height of his greatness.  She knew his fate, and had to bear the sorrow.  Mary is the one goddess that has been allowed in Christianity. She stands for compassion, nurturing, acceptance and love.  I think her archetype deeply effects women, especially mothers.
I am writing this right now as I am struggling with my son.  He is in 3rd grade and he is beginning to hate school.  He daydreams a lot and doesn't know how to handle his emotions very well.  He is a typical boy in our society. Boys are getting more and more lost everyday.  I think the Mary archetype has a lot to do with mothers and their sons.  We are losing our sons to war and violence, and we are suppose to just grin and bear it.  We are suppose to be strong and just let our sons go, at least this seems to be the underlying message from our society.  But I think it is time for Mary to wake up.
I thought I would show you a few of the work in progress pics of Mary so you can see exactly how she evolved.  Sometimes I change them and play with them a lot before they are finished.

"Mary, Queen of Sorrows"                                                  

 16x20 acrylic and ink on panel

2011

The Ever changing Persephone

I showed a sketch of my "Persephone's Folly" on my Facebook fan page a couple of days ago. I started painting on her yesterday, and noticed she changed a lot. That often happens when I start painting on them, their faces change and morph on me. I was a little sad at first because there was something in the face of the sketch that I really liked. But now I am realizing there is no way to control Persephone, she is a force that can never be defined or fully understood.
Sketch with some background color added:

Beginnings of skin tone added, she changed already:

Where she is now:

Luckily I don't have to write a novel here telling you all about Persephone. We all know her story, and yet none of us really knows if she ate all those pomegrante seeds on purpose or if she was a victim (I don't think she was a victim).
One thing I am trying to bring through in this painting is the tree of life. In a lot of old paintings a snake is wrapped around a tree to signify it as the tree of life. I have a snake wrapped around Persephone and vegetation in her hair along with the look of her hair to hint to her being the tree. She represents the Underworld, the subconscious, the tree of life that connects to both the Underworld and the Upperworld.
She is also holding the fruit like a tree bearing fruit. I am also paying homage to one of my favorite painters and my favorite Persephone painting. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Proserpine":

Demeter's Dream, new WIP

I don't know what it is about this time of year, but my creative spark always seems to get extinguished. I guess all I feel like doing is hanging out at the pool with the kids and drinking a beer on the patio. Ahhhh summertime :)

I finished the Cosmic Clown, but was still not completely satisfied with her. I need to take a good photo of her, but just haven't yet. I think I forced her when I just was not in the mood to paint. So I took a couple of weeks off. Then a commission came in, and I needed to get back into the swing of things. I hate to start a commission when I am in a creative slump or it ends up being forced too. This coming commission is one where I really need to connect in a heartfelt way so I decided to try a new piece to warm me up. I think it worked, I am feeling the spark light up again.

So I thought I would show you more of the whole progression of this one. She is one of those pieces that I changed a lot as I went along. Here is what I have done so far on her:

I still have a lot of details to work out on her, but I will probably start that commission now. Got to do it while I am on a creative roll :). These days I seem to need to grab it while it lasts. The kids have their last day of school today, so things are going to be different around here for awhile. Trying to paint with them around can be interesting at best with them chanting "I'm bored, there's nothing to do" in the background. I end up painting a lot into the wee hours of the night during the summer, which is okay since I don't have to get up at 6 a.m. to get them to school.

When I do finally get "Demeter's Dream" done I will write a little more about her for you. Until then, happy summer (or winter if you are in Australia).

The Cosmic Clown, a slow work in progress

Sometimes when I take a break from painting for a week or so, it is so hard to get back into it. I am not an artist that can just constantly paint and churn out work. I can't seem to just paint to be painting. I have to really be inspired and in my creative zone it seems. Then there is the perfectionist in me that thinks every work needs to be even better than the last one. This gets me into trouble a lot, as it is right now.
I started a new painting last week. I had no real plan with it. Honestly, I had been staring at the amazing work of Nashville artist Danielle Duer and those crazy little inky designs she does. I wanted to play around with some ink and tiny little brushes, and that's about it.
I didn't use a reference model. I usually find some pic of a fashion model and base my girl roughly off of her, but this time I made her up. I just wanted to see what happened. Well, I could not get something I liked. I gessoed and gessoed over her face. I got frustrated over and over with the way she was looking, and yet nothing I did seem to make it better. She kept seeming too masculine and not "pretty enough". This made me really think about what my real goal for the piece really was. Why do I need them to be pretty?
Once I started to think about that the whole idea for the painting came to light, and maybe ideas for future ones too. I got to thinking about expectations laid upon us, and about how we are eternally acting out these expectations. We are truly always acting, even when we are being the most real. The Internet is where we really do our best acting and Facebook seems to be our greatest stage. We present ourselves in a certain way by what we choose to show others.
So I realized this painting is frustrating me because she is reflecting me in so many ways right now. She came completely out of my subconscious and I guess this is what my subconscious wants to express in the now. I want to do a series of paintings that touch upon our many roles. Especially as women, we are expected to play so many roles...nurturer, listener, healer, warrior, provider, maid, sex kitten, the list goes on and on.
I am starting with the Cosmic Clown. In college when I was studying Western Native American cultures I was always struck by the idea of the Sacred Clown. This idea was so very important to cultures like the Lakota and the Hopi. These clowns exposed hypocrisy and arrogance before these behaviors got out of hand. Thus Sacred Clowns were considered spiritual leaders in their tribes, because they helped keep the balance in the community.
So my Cosmic Clown is a Sacred Clown, but maybe a wounded one. One that knows how important her role still is, but also knows that no one seems to care anymore about the part.
I am working really slow on her. It is not a big painting or particularly detailed, I am just having so much trouble finding the energy to finish her. I keep thinking I am going to put her on the unfinished shelf, but for some reason I don't. I know it is still because she is not perfect in my mind. Why can't I get over that expectation? Oh, those nasty expectations.......

New wip and a rant

Haven't posted much this month.  I have been real busy painting and getting ready for this coming weekend's showing and next weekend's juried art show.  I promised you a rant in the title so here goes....
People who complain about art costing too much have no idea the amount of work that goes into being an artist.  I think most people think artists just happily paint for a few hours everyday and that is it.  We also collectively have this idea that to earn lots of money we must be working extremely hard at something we hate.
I wish that all I had to do was paint, but that alone would still take up a big chunk of my time.  Each painting I do takes me anywhere from 12 to 40 hours to complete, depending on size and difficulty.  This is usually spread out over many days, painting anywhere from 3 to 6 hours a day.  Once a painting is complete I have to varnish, wire, and sometimes frame.  Varnishing alone can take me hours to do, as I seem to have bad luck with it and often have to go repaint things I messed up with the varnish.  I do all my own framing and this is by no means easy or quickly done.
The other time consuming aspect of being an artist is the copying of your work, or taking photographs, scanning, etc.  I spend a lot of time photographing my pieces.  I have to do it outside on a good weather day.  This can be challenging at best.  Then I have to edit all my pieces in Photoshop to make them as close to the real work as possible to post online.  All of this can take me anywhere from 3 to 5 hours to do, on just one piece of art.  Next you spend time uploading art to all of your websites where you sell prints, Etsy, Red Bubble, etc.  This can often take up an afternoon.
Next you have making prints, packaging prints, shipping prints, making other things to sell like pendants (this takes up lots of time).  So if you add all this up we are going over 40 hours of work a week. 
Pricing your art is one of the hardest parts of being an artist.  What is it's value?  That is a hard question.  We certainly do not get paid for our time.  Just to make a nice round $10 bucks an hour we would have to sell a $400 painting a week, every week.  Then there is the obscure question of how good is it.  We all have seen artwork that sells for thousands that we wouldn't pay $10 for, and ones that sell for $100 that seem to be worth a lot more.
My pricing is random and somewhat based on how much I am attached to the work, and the size of the piece.  I am usually flexible though, and willing to hear offers of course.
Okay, that is about it for my rant, although I haven't even mentioned the high cost of art supplies.  Most of you reading this are artists too, so I am probably preaching to the choir.  But many of my friends that are not artists, even my own husband, have no idea what I do all day.  Somehow I have to fit in cleaning the house, grocery shopping, and taking care of my kids and myself in all of this.  Oh, and I left out the self-promotion on the internet time....like this blog....there is another few hours a day, just trying to get your work out there and seen (advertising).
Okay, on to my current work in progress.  I have been experimenting with different surfaces.  This one is small because it is a sample that I got from Raymar of one of their polyflax cotton canvas panels.  It is a very nice surface that I will definately try again.  It is also what sparked my rant, because it is only 9x12 inches, but I have already put about 12 hours into painting it and am still not totally done.  Just because it is smaller than many of my other works does not mean it is worth less.  I am also really loving it, it has changed a lot already from this pic I am posting now.

The Phoenix Keeper finished

I finally finished up the Phoenix Keeper today and I thought I would write a bit about the symbolism of the Phoenix, but first here is what she looks like finished.

The Phoenix has appeared in myth in cultures spanning the globe, from Egypt to Japan to Native American lore.  It is always associated with the sun and usually immortality and rebirth.  This legendary bird was believed to die in its self-made flames periodically then rise again out of its own ashes (some say after three days and therefore often connected with Christ in Christianity).  Linked to the worship of the fiery sun and sun gods such as Mexico's Quetzalcoatl, it was named "a god of Phoenecia" by the Phoenician. To alchemists, it symbolized the the destruction and creation of new forms of matter along the way to the ultimate goal: the philosopher's stone.
But I wanted to show the connection of the Phoenix with the Divine Feminine.  Often the Phoenix, because it is connected to the Sun, is connected to the Sun gods and the masculine.  Once again, this is a goddess symbol that has been stolen or rather hidden.  The Phoenix is truly a symbol of the Divine Feminine that is returning now from the ashes.   Those ashes are of all the women that were burned as witches when the Patriarchy tried to stamp out the goddess once and for all.  But now many of those "witches" have returned and are bringing the Goddess back out of the ashes.

It is interesting that just recently it was all over Facebook about the news of the 13th astrological sign and that everyone's astrology sign had changed.  Well, astrologers have known about this for centuries.  The Phoenix is the 13th sign, 13 is the number of the goddess.  We are just now becoming aware of her resurrection and rebirth.

The Divine Feminine is essentially our connection to our souls.  For some reason, as human beings developed their minds, most lost their connection to their soul (I say most, because a few spiritual movements taught how to develop the mind without losing that connection like the Taoist).  Also as we developed our minds we lost our connection to nature.  The Goddess is connected to our primordial nature.  She is always connected to animals, birds, plants, and the oldest of symbols the serpents and dragons.  The serpent represents our reptilian brain that acts on instinctual impulses.  As we developed our minds the prevailing thought became that this was a part of us that needed to be conquered, the dragon that needed to be defeated.  With the goddess the snake is often showed as a companion and protector.  To have the serpent as guardian rather than adversary means that what was blind and unconscious and in its primordial state in us has been raised to consciousness.

The Phoenix in myth is often a blend of a bird and a serpent, thus making it the perfect symbol of the balance between spirit and matter.  Birds have long been associated with the goddess as they are a symbol of the spirit and are messengers of the Otherworld.  The Phoenix is a messenger bird of the goddess, and is returning to help us remember our true connection to our soul and to the soul of the Earth.  We are now being reborn into a new consciousness that is one human beings have never experience before.  We have developed our minds and can now use our spirit to raise what was unconscious to the light of consciousness.

I painted my Phoenix white to represent the purity of the soul (and I was influenced by the Phoenix in the Harry Potter movies, big fan :).  I gave her some peacock like feathers to represent the third eye opening.  Also my Keeper has 6 roses.  Six is the number of Venus and the roses can be connected to love and the heart chakra among so many other associations.

One finished, one wip

Finally I think my muse has returned. I think she was hibernating most of the winter. I wasn't able to finish Ishtar. I got 3/4's the way done and decided I didn't really like the composition. I am silly that way sometimes. I will throw her on the half done pile and maybe come back to her 6 months from now. I just had this idea, it would be a fun collaboration with another artist to each send the other one of their half dones and see how someone else finishes it off. Anyhoo....
I wanted to paint a girl in a cocoon. That is how I am feeling right now, like I am about to sprout wings but for now I have to be patient in my cocoon. I finished her in about 3 days last week (she is small 11in. x 14 in.). My problem is that my camera is very old and crapping out on me. Everytime I try to take pictures in the larger settings it puts all these vibration looking lines into the work. Luckily my in-laws are giving me a "new" hand me down camera. It's only about 5 years old and still will be a major upgrade from the one I have now. I won't get this fabulous new camera for 4 more days, so I won't be able to take a good pic of her until then. I have a hard time not showing you all my work the minute it is complete so here is a teaser shot:

When I first decided I was going to learn to paint it was because I had decided at the time I would never be able to afford original art and if I wanted some on my walls I would have to do it myself. The point is I am completely addicted to original art. Since being on Red Bubble I have made many connections with other artist and have aquired some orginals through trade. Someday I will post a blog with pics of my "collection".
So my latest aquisition is by the amazing fantasy/faerie artist from Australia Kim Turner. I gave her a painting for her "Ariadne". I just love this painting so much, and seeing it in person is even more amazing than imaginable. I love staring at her painting strokes up close. I can't explain it, but it is like you feel the love she put into it. I think that is the power of true art. I told my husband I got tears in my eyes when I first opened it out of the box and he said "now you know what your art has the power to do for people."
Well, needless to say I was beyond inspired after getting her work. Last night I had to start another painting. I stayed up way too late and started this work I am going to call "The Phoenix Keeper". I am pretty sure it won't end up in the half done pile.

First doggie portrait

Well I have my very first doggie portrait almost finished. Still needs a few more layers of paint, but it is almost there. The client loves the color red and said she likes the pop aspects of my work, so I am hoping she will like the dramatic red sky behind her adorable little girl. Here is the original photo and what I have done so far:




I am having trouble with my digital camera, the viewfinder screen has decided to go out on me. This makes it extremely hard to get good shots of my work, so it looks like it is time for a new one. Doesn't it always seem to go like that, you sell a few things and something goes out where you immediately have to spend the money you made. Such is life I guess. Hope everyone is having a stress free Holiday season (is that even possible?).....

The Bridge and the Fox

I made some good progress on "The Bridge" this weekend. I am actually really happy with her so far. I am working on the wee lil' fox in it right now and having the best time. I really need to explore painting more animals. I have been almost obsessed with birds for so long, it is time to open up to more animal energy.
Fox really wanted to be in this painting. I have been seeing foxes all over the place for weeks now. Fox is not really a totem energy I have worked with much before, but it makes so much sense why she is showing up now. I originally placed fox here because she is one of the animals associated with the Faerie realm, because she is seen only at dawn and dusk. These are the times "in between" when the doors to the Faerie realm are open. But fox's connections with camouflage, shapeshifting and invisibility are quite interesting too.
All of these abilities are associated with feminine magic. According to Ted Andrews in his book "Animal Speak", there are 21 species of fox. 21 is The World card in tarot. Andrews states that this reflects that the world is "growing and shapeshifting itself into new patterns that will be beneficial".
Ancient Chinese and Native American lore both tell of beautiful maidens that can shapeshift into a fox and can be the downfall of men that fall in love with them. Again from Andrews: "This is very symbolic of the idea of magic being born within the feminine energies, and that unless a male can recognize the magic of the feminine-in himself or others-and learn to use it to shapeshift his own life, it will ultimately lead to destruction." Well that just about sums up the idea behind most of my paintings, and now I see more clearly why fox wanted to be in this one.
Here is a little peak at my lil' fox friend:




I am going to start painting the hare soon, and will try to post a little about her symbolism when I do.

Finding Balance and Lilith

Sorry I have been incommunicado for so long around here. I am coming out of a long period of a creative dry spell that coincided with the dog days of summer. I have felt completely disconnected from my spirit and fully immersed in the physical world and the day to day lately. But as the Autumnal Equinox approached I felt the old magic starting to return. I started to paint again and started to feel the presence of Lilith. I have been working on a Lilith painting for a couple of weeks now. Lilith is a powerful ancient goddess energy. I have been working with snake energy for so long now and they have appeared over and over in my work in the last year. It is so connected with the energy of the Divine Feminine, and is what we as women are constantly working with in this present moment. It is about transmutation, and sometimes I feel like I am working overtime transmuting energies.
Women have been told for so long that they can't be too powerful. Often, as we start to finally reach the potential of our own power, we pull back. We have been taught for thousands of years to pull back. When we pull back sometimes we pull back so far we have a hard time finding that power again. Lilith is a huge symbol for this. She was a very powerful woman. She refused to submit to Adam and stood up to him, she spoke and lived her truth. For this, she was turned into a demonic witch by the Patriarchal forces that were in power.
So within the myth is the symbol of how women still today collectively fear becoming too powerful. Look at women in our world with a lot power like Hillary Clinton, Oprah, Nancy Pelosi and look at how they are portrayed by the media. I just gave a bunch of examples of powerful Liberal leaning women, but look at how Sarah Palin is portrayed in the media, and you realize it doesn't matter what her beliefs or political leanings are, a powerful woman is usually slandered repeatedly. This is what we need to transmute. We need to transmute this fear of being too powerful and the fear of what the world will do to us if we step into our place of power.
Last night during the powerful Aries full moon and Equinox, I sat in a circle with some magical sisters and felt the power of this transmutation. It is very important now more than ever for us to be in community and to draw upon each others strengths to help us reach our own potential. I feel more balanced now and aligned with the current energies.
So here is just a little sneak peek of my Lilith's face. I haven't been taking WIP pics this time. I have been so immersed in her I haven't even stopped to take pics. I have tried to capture her allure, her strength, and yet a look of fear that represents that collective fear of our own power. I still have a lot of fine details to work on, but she is getting closer to complete.



Beyond that I have just been running the kids to and from school. I recently showed at the Kentucky Showcase at Awesome Inc. in Lexington. It opened during the last Gallery Hop in town and here is little pic of me at the reception with two of my pieces.



I just cut off a bunch of hair, it was getting pretty long before. Another sign I am letting go of the old and ready for the new that is yet to come. I hope everyone else is feeling the balance return too.

Tiamat-finished

Well, at least I think I am done with her. I worked and worked on her, and changed elements on it over and over. I think I am fairly happy with how she turned out, but my self critic was out in full force with this one towards the end.

I wanted to go into some of the symbolism and my reasoning on this one. Tiamat is usually drawn as a three headed dragon, but I wanted to do this with my own impressions on the myth, and not rely on what I could read in Wikipedia. In the Sumerian myth the generation of creator gods that Tiamat is a part of is referred to as the "Ancient Ones". I believe that these Ancient Ones might have been another race, maybe like the Elven or an Elder race. A less fanciful idea is that they were a matriarchal people that were overtaken by a more warrior-like Patriarchal people. Again the passage that inspired the piece:
"Know that Tiamat seeks ever to rise to the stars, and when the upper is united with the lower, then a New Age will come to the Earth, and the Serpent shall be made whole again, and the waters will be as One."
I believe that this passage is talking a lot about humans having the ability to walk in both worlds, or uniting the spiritual and the material parts of ourselves. This is what we are all asked to do right now. I personally find it a very hard task. I seem to swing from one world to the next, and can not remain in both at once very often.
The stars represent the spiritual, and the lower world is our lower selves, or material selves. Tiamat seeks to rise to the stars, but is held down because the serpent is not one. I represent the serpent in this painting with a coral snake in an ouroboros style. The ouroboros is a well known symbol of the goddess energy. It's mouth represents it's positive active energy, and it's tail represents it's passive negative energy. When it bites it's own tail it is neutralized, it becomes the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I used a coral snake here because they are venomous. When it reaches it's tail it will be one, and neutralized. The masculine aggressive energy neutralized by the feminine.
There are many myths all over the world of an ancient race of wise people known as Serpents or Dragons. I believe this is why Tiamat was called a Dragon, she was part of these ancient wise people that possibly disappeared when the Patriarchal societies took over. Also, the ley lines that run under the earth are often referred to as Dragons. We must be able to converse with these Dragons under the ground and with the stars above to bring on the New Age. Many of those myths that talk about the ancient wise serpent people talk about them retreating underground, like in the myths of the Tuatha de Danann. So maybe they are or were physical beings that went "underground", or maybe they are the Dragon energy that runs through the arteries of our great Gaia. It is something I ponder a lot.
In the painting behind Tiamat's masculine side is a pair of ducks. Ducks represent an energy that lives in water, on land, and in the sky. They are showing us how to walk in both worlds. On her feminine side there is lost of plants and Earth energy. It is the energy of the Earth that helps us connect to the Feminine energy needed to neutralize our abundance of material energy.
Tiamat has three eyes instead of three heads here I suppose. The third eye of course is an Eastern symbol for obtaining inner vision and wisdom. The mist surrounding her represents the veil that surrounds us all and keeps us from seeing beyond the physical world. She is also rising up out of the ocean, or the unconscious. This is what the goddess has been doing for sometime now, rising out of the depths of our unconscious. Tiamat is one of the most ancient goddesses known. When she has fully risen out of our collective unconscious, a New Age will truly be upon us.

Tiamat WIP

I was totally struck by a quote from the ancient Sumerian myth and decided to paint Tiamat. She is the creatrix goddess of the Sumerian cylce. She is connected to serpents and dragons and was killed by her own grandson Marduk. Possibly this is another myth symbolizing the matriarchy being destroyed by the patriarchy, but like most ancient myth, the symbolism is multi-layered. Here is the quote that I couldn't get out of my head:
"Know that Tiamat seeks ever to rise to the stars, and when the upper is united with the lower, then a New Age will come to the Earth, and the Serpent shall be made whole again, and the waters will be as One."
I will go more into my interpretation of that when I have completed Tiamat, but for now I will just post my WIP pics. You will get to see how nuerotic I can be with my backgrounds with this progression.



The above image shows my graphite underdrawing. It is just a rough sketch and the painting usually morphs into something a little different looking than the sketch.



Here I have started to give her a little color and decided to go with black hair again.



More color added. I was thinking I wanted a drippy background here, but was really feeling unsatisfied with it. Basically, at this step, I had no idea what to do with the background. I like to paint the women sort of realistic with a lot of detail and make them the main focus. I like my backgrounds to be more abstract, but I never really know exactly how they will turn out. It is a lot of trial and error.



At this stage I decided to forget the drip, and go with a solid dark blue background.



At this stage I added some kind of circle thingys with drips. I am not sure really why except they look kind of cool. I will come up with some esoteric meaning later maybe. I do plan to paint yet another snake around her in an ouroboros style. I guess the circles will reflect that. I am feeling the power of this goddess and having a great time working on her. Hopefully I will have her done and posted by the end of this week.

The Seeker, finished

This is the "The Seeker" finished. The seeker represents the beginning step of the initiate as she steps onto the path of ascension. She wears the hermetic symbol the Seal of Light over her third eye region. This symbol alone represents the totality of our initiation into a state of perfection. The circle represents all energy and the ultimate expression of unity in the Cosmos. The square represents the crystallization of energy into definite form and the idea of perfect harmony. The trinity is shown by the triangle. Finally, the inner circle represents eternity.

At a deeper level of initiation however the three geometric solids equate to the alchemical solutions of Mercury, Sulphur and Salt. These represent not only chemicals but the spiritual and invisible principles of Soul, Spirit and Body and the three lights, Stellar Fire, Solar Fire and Lunar Fire. To those in possession of 'the key' this symbol, or cipher, is thought to reveal the 'alchemical' formula for discovering Man's essence and transmuting him in stages into a state of perfection - a reflection of God (definition of hermetic seal from http://cosmiccipher.blogspot.com/2006/10/symbols-ciphers-divine-proportion.html).

She wears this symbol, and yet she has not seen it yet. It guides her from her third eye, but she is not consciously aware of it yet. Behind her is a forest that she seems to have just came out of, and yet behind her is the direction she needs to proceed. The two giant egg shapes represent her own hidden potential. The bird and the feather are representations of gifts from spirit that will help guide her along the path.

She is excited to begin the journey, but she is not quite aware of the gifts she possesses. She is the seeker, much like the fool in tarot. The hermetic seal is also repeated in the way the two trees form a square, along with her own triangular shape, and the circle of her face. In a sense, this potential of transmutation is always with us, and all around us.

I really enjoyed experimenting with this piece. I had so much fun with the drip effect. It is definitely a process of letting go for me and letting it just happen. I am looking forward to working more with this technique.

The Seeker, a Work in Progress

Okay, so I have decided to set up a blog for the first time. I thought I would make my first posting about the current work in progress. It is an acrylic painting that is 22x28. I am pretty excited about this one. It is almost finished, but I still need to clean up some details on it. I plan to do a whole series of similar paintings that all deal with different aspects of my own spiritual journey. I will write up a longer posting when I am done with it to explain some of the meanings and symbols. I would love to hear any feedback and or suggestions you might have.